Et pis bon, ben alors voilà quoi!Teaching those pesky discourse markers

Abstract

Discourse markers have been described as “nervous tics, fillers, or signs of hesitation”, and are frequently dismissed as features of lazy or inarticulate speech. Yet in fact they have a number of crucial functions in spoken interaction, such as buying time, managing turn taking, linking utterances, introducing a new topic and indicating the degree of speaker involvement. Discourse markers are said to be used more in conversational speech than in any other form of communication. For this reason, it is essential that we teach our language students how to recognise, understand and use these markers in spoken interaction. Because of their slipperiness, however, discourse markers are often omitted from the language classroom. This article will demonstrate how authentic data can be exploited to teach a number of French discourse markers to tertiary learners of French as an additional language, and will include an idea for a follow up assessment task.